Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Language, Religion and Slavery (Part 2)

In Regione Caecorum Rex est Luscus

(In the land of the blind,
the one-eyed man is king.)

And so I see that I must say something also of
the eloquence of the Prophets, greatly cloaked as it is in a metaphorical
style. The more, however, that they seem
obscure by use of figurative expressions, the more pleasing they are when their
meaning has been made clear.

St.
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine

The founding fathers' of the United States
of America used the ancient empires of Greece and Rome as models for their
democratic experiment; and this should come as no surprise because the Americans
found themselves in a similar situation to that of the Ancient Greeks and
Romans – a wealthy elite minority ruling over an impoverished servant majority.
As a result, democracies are inherently divided into masters and servants;
owners and owned; and, initiated and uninitiated. Friedrich Nietzsche noted in The Genealogy of Morals that the
language used to describe these binary pairs distinguished one’s class and
suggested a typical character trait. The word the Greek aristocracy used to
describe themselves was esthlos,
meaning one who has “true reality.” This is in contrast to the lying plebeian.[i] In
such a system, metaphor and irony work in conjunction to communicate
information that assumes a dual audience, consisting of one group that only understands
the literal meaning, and another group that understands the literal and
symbolic meanings. Consider too that the
word irony originates from the Greek eironeia, which means “feigned
ignorance.”

By use of figures of speech with more than one level of
interpretation, a writer could incorporate ironic schemes into their
works. The effect is the slaves
understand the literal message, whereas the literal and deeper meanings are
known to the esthlos, or those who
know truth. The truth they know is the
real image behind the metaphor. According to legend, the Greek philosopher
Pythagoras taught on a stage from behind a curtain. On stage with him, behind the curtain were
his most adept students, called the Mathematika. Those outside of the curtain, the exoteric,
can hear all of what is being discussed, but they lack any visual context—no
gestures, no access to visual teaching aids.
Meanwhile, the esoteric or inner circle sees the ironic smile, a
physical gesture indicating something unsaid, or maybe even a physical teaching
aid. Those on the outside are not
getting the complete context of the discourse; it is like reading Plato’s Republic as opposedto hearing him expound his ideas at the Academy, or reading the Gospel of John rather than hearing him
preach in the wilderness.

In A
Rhetoric of Irony, Wayne Booth suggests that some metaphors are fixed or
stable. These stable metaphors are not
infinite ambiguities, but specific covert references intended to be
reconstructed with meaning different from on those on the surface. Once a reconstruction of meaning is made, the
reader is not invited to undermine it further.[ii] Perhaps
nowhere in Western culture is this more evident than in scriptures of the Holy
Bible. The authors of these texts know
exactly what they are writing about, but phrase the information in a way that
obscures its meaning to those outside of the intended audience. Consider that the followers are not are not
even allowed to speak their god’s name.
Instead, they refer to their god as Yahweh,
a substitution for the god’s real name (a symbol for a symbol). To obscure Yahweh’s image even more, the
second commandment makes it a crime to fashion an image of the god. Therefore, the identity of Yahweh remains a
secret; and the tradition of secrecy continues in Christianity.

Jesus says to his disciples, “To you has been
given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but for those outside—everything is in
parables.” According to scholar Frank
Kermode, “a parable could be translated as “comparison”, “illustration”, or
“analogy”, but in the Greek Bible it is the equivalent to Hebrew mashal, which means “riddle” or “dark
saying.”[iii]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, riddle means both: “a question or
statement intentionally worded in a dark or puzzling manner…a coarse-meshed
sieve, used for separating chaff from corn, sand from gravel, ashes from
cinders, etc.”. Furthermore, riddles
from Africa are unlike European models in that “they are often cryptic
statements, of a poetic or philosophical character, which do not contain the
question element,” and kings and holy men used riddles to test one’s wisdom.[iv] Even by
Jesus’ admission that he speaks in parables—it should be clear the language is
figurative and meant to be obscure. In this
case, literally a “riddle,” whose purpose is to separate those “who know” from
those “who do not know.” By examining
the figurative language used to describe Jesus, one could argue that there is a
fixed ironic meaning or secret code encrypted into the tropes of Christ.

The New Testament authors used metaphor to
refer to Jesus. Here is a short list:I am the Resurrection and
the Life (John 11:25), The
Word was made flesh (John 1:14), The
Lamb of God (Jhn 1:29), The Way
(Jhn 14:6), The Door of the Sheep, (Jhn 10:7), The True Vine (Jhn 15:1), The
Tree of Life (Rev 2:7), The Corn of
Wheat (Jhn 12:24), The True Bread
from Heaven (Jhn 6:32), The Living
Bread (Jhn 6:51), The Hidden Manna (Rev 2:17), The Light (Jhn 12:35), The Rock (Mat 16:18), The Builder (Hbr 3:3), The Foundation (1Cr 3:11), An Elect Stone (1Pe 2:6), The Truth (Jhn 14:6), The Resurrection (Jhn 11:25). Is it possible that all of these descriptions
are of the same thing and that the writers purposely obscured them to be hidden
from the vulgar masses?

The Gospel
of John is most mystical of the New Testament Gospels in terms of its
vagueness. In one passage, Jesus
encourages his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and that doing
so will give a person eternal life.
Consider the following quote from the Gospel of John:

I am
the bread of life. Your forefathers ate
the manna in the desert, yet they died.
But here is the Bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat
and not die. I am the living bread that
came down from heaven. If anyone eats of
this bread, he will live forever. This
bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world
(6:48-51)...Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I
will raise him up on the last day (6:54).

When Jesus claims to be the true bread of heaven, he is
saying that he is the manna. However,
this is only an allusion to another riddle.

In Exodus, Moses leads the tribe into the wilderness,
where they run out of food. The people
complain to Moses, who petitions the lord with prayer. The lord informs Moses
that he will rain down bread for the people to eat. On the given day, there is dew on the ground,
and there is what appears to be “a small round thing” (King James' Version) on
the ground. Moses tells the Israelites
that this is bread from the lord and to gather as much as they can, but not to
keep any overnight. However, some did
not pay attention, and the next day they found their bread stinking and laced
with maggots. “Each morning each person
gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away”
(Exodus 16:21).

As a riddle—what edible thing appears on the
ground as “a small round thing” in conjunction with dew? It melts in the sun;
and if you keep it overnight, it breeds worms and stinks? Mushrooms! No other life form on earth meets
the criterion so conveniently.
Mushrooms are small round things that seasonally appear on the ground in
conjunction with moisture. They are
edible. Fungus gnats lay their eggs on
mushrooms, and newly hatched maggots eat their way into the mushrooms. Many species of mushroom melt away through
out the day—what mycologists refer to as deliquescing. Furthermore, dried mushroom caps can resemble
a round loaf of bread. Further still, is the mushrooms’ ability to reproduce
without copulation; they appear miraculously overnight, they are gone by noon,
and the next morning are they miraculously return. However, the most interesting aspect of the
mushroom is that some of them contain psychotropic alkaloids causing
hallucinations or what some refer to a mystical experience. These psychedelic or magic mushrooms may
provide deeper insight into the Mystery of Jesus.

Many verses of the Gospel of John translate
the Greek logos into “word”; however,
another interpretation of logos is
“reason.” Consider the following quote
from John 1:14, “and the word [logos]
was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” In The Great Code, Northrop Frye notes that
metaphorically, logos is used metonymically
to convey the sense of rational order.[v] In this
way, you eat the flesh of Jesus (mushroom) and experience reason or logos. Consider a personal account of the mushroom
ecstasy from mycologist Gordon Wasson:

The visions came in endless procession, each
growing out of the preceding one. We had
the sensation that our humble house had vanished, that our untrammeled souls
were floating in the empyrean, stoked by divine breezes, possessed of a divine
mobility that would transport us anywhere on wings of thoughts…At last I was
seeing through the eye of my soul, not through the course lenses of the natural
eyes. Moreover, what I was seeing was
impregnated with weighty meaning; I was awe-struck.[vi]

From a current field guide on Mushrooms:

…the principle effects are
on the central nervous system include: confusion, mild euphoria, loss of
muscular coordination, profuse sweating, chills, visual distortions, a feeling
of greater strength and sometimes hallucinations, delusions, or convulsions. An inordinate amount of trippers mistake
themselves for “Christ.” The effects
last for several hours and there are no hangovers.[vii]

Now, compare that to the effect that Socrates (as logos)
has on Meno:

…they told me that in plain
truth you [Socrates] are a perplexed man yourself and reduce others to
perplexity. At this moment I feel you
are exercising your magic and witchcraft upon me and positively laying me under
your spell until I am just a mass of helplessness….My mind and lips are
literally numb.[viii]

Perhaps another way of interpreting the
psychedelic experience is-- it is a way of realizing the truth beyond the
binary of good/evil. In Genesis, Adam and Eve eat of the tree of
knowledge, and they become aware that they are unclothed; signifying that
ingesting the fruit promotes self-awareness beyond one's perceived identity.

God created Adam and Eve and put them in the
Garden of Eden to work. God tells them
they are “free” to eat anything in the garden—except “from the tree of
knowledge of good and evil. For when you
eat of it you will surely die.” The
serpent implies that God is a liar, and tells Eve that she will not die. Satan says, “For God knows that your eyes
will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil” (Genesis
3:4). When Eve sees the fruit she cannot
resist seeing that the fruit was “good for food,” “pleasing to the eye,” and
“desirable for gaining wisdom.” She
shares the fruit with Adam and “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they
realized they were naked” (Genesis 3:6-7).
Consequently, for not following directions the primordial pair are
banished from Eden, with an aside by God, “The man has now become like one of
us knowing good from evil.” Eating this
fruit has put Adam on Eve on equal footing with God and his angelic court. They
do not die as God implies, but
become like gods—knowing the difference between good and evil, as the snake
implied.

In essence, the Tree of Knowledge represents a
drug, or what the Greeks called a pharmakon.
And the Serpent represents the effects the pharmakon has on one's mind.
The pharmakon is a philter, which acts as both a remedy and poison.[ix] As the pharmakon
affects the individual, so the individual affects culture. The Serpent, Moses, Jesus and Socrates are
social pharmakons who vaccinate their
respective cultures with their drug-inspired revolutionary discourse. Their
discourse challenges the current tradition, or rather disrupts the current of
tradition, but even revolution is part of the tradition. Therefore, if you are in a position of
authority (political, economical, scientific, art)figures like Socrates and Jesus undermine that authority. Their
inspired discourse represents a virus that must be contained before the whole
culture can be infected.

Psychedelic mushrooms are a gateway to cosmic
consciousness, a door to the Kingdom of Heaven; however, the door is locked and
there is a No Trespassingsign
nailed to it. In the United States, it
is a felony to possess mushrooms containing the psychoactive alkaloids
psilocybin or psilocin, and for a first time conviction punishable by loss of
federal benefits, forfeiture of personal and private property, up to a year in
prison, fine not more than $100,000 (21 USC §844, §862). According to Robert
Graves, the ancient Israelites practiced something similar. He writes:

The Hebrews held the mushroom holy, and
reserved them for the priests, kings and other privileged classes; and to
prevent the underprivileged from eating a sacred mushroom, a general syeg or taboo was put on mushroom eating
and reinforced by treating all mushrooms as poisonous.[x]

By indoctrinating a culture into regarding
mushrooms as poisonous—the whole culture is ignorant of this god-derived
knowledge, and fears the mushroom as deadly.
Meanwhile, the priestly caste develops scripture as a way to preserve
this culture. A tradition that goes back
to Moses and the second version of the Ten Commandments .

Moses is coming down the mountain with the two
“stone tablets” of testimony inscribed by god, when he discovers that the tribe
has abandoned his precepts. Furthermore, they have resorted to their former
ways by dancing ecstatically around the image of a golden calf. He throws down the tablets breaking them, and
smashes the golden calf. Then Moses says
“whoever is for the lord, come with me.”
To those who come with him, he instructs, “Each man strap a sword to his
side. Go back and forth through the camp
from one end to the other each killing his brother and friend and neighbor,”
Exodus 32:27. With the camp free of
malcontents, Moses goes back to the mountains and in secrecy craves out a new
set of tablets. The first set of tablets
broken by Moses were created by the Lord, “When the Lord finished speaking to
Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets
of stone inscribed by the finger of God,” Exodus 31:18. However, the tablets that the people receive
are carved out by Moses, “And he wrote on the tablets the words of the
covenant—the Ten Commandments,” Exodus 34:28.

The original tablets were
the mushrooms. This is a secret Moses is
about to share with his people, until he realizes his power has been displaced
in his absence. Moses kills off all the
opposition to his party, and then substitutes his “stone tablets” for the
Lord’s tablets. In a sense, he replaced
the divine logos with the human logic of the written word, even setting it in
stone. Moses as the builder of Judaism
has rejected the stone tablet given by god, and settles on his own version—the
Ten Commandments. By rejecting the
mushroom, the exoteric see mushrooms as revolting and a sign for death, while
the esoteric know the mushroom is a sign of God. Hence, it is the control of
and manipulation of this mushroom knowledge that provides the foundation for
Western culture—teeming ignorant masses. Now that’s ironic.

The world’s major religions are institutions of slavery
used to imprison one’s mind. While the
etymology of the word religion is
vague, the Oxford English Dictionary suggested it means, “to bind.” Even Jesus refers to his teachings as a yoke
in Matthew 11:29, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…” Consider the word the Greeks used to for
their slaves—anthropoda, meaning
“two-footed stock.”[xi] Some
interpret this yoke to mean a spiritual submission to God; however, to the
Romans, Caesar was God; to the Egyptians, Pharaoh was god. Historically, god
was a man; and religions taught people (colonized) to submit to these Lords
(colonizers).

Western literary tradition is essentially
derived from this model of allegorical stories with hidden messages encrypted
in the text. Readers perceive stories
and poems as allegorical because they use Biblical symbols and references;
however, the master scribes knowingly embed the Biblical mushroom motifs into
their texts. For example, many people
think that John Milton’s Paradise Lost
is ironic because Satan appears to be the hero, but that is entirely the
point! Satan was the first Christ
figure, or mushroom trope. Not only
that, but also many of the gods that Milton chooses to trope into devils were
likely ancient names of mushrooms. Milton uses Beelzebub, which means Lord of
the Flies; and consider Amanita is also called Fly agaric. He describes Belial
as a “manna” tongued devil whose only principle is “peace at any price,” and he
“could make the worse appear the better reason, to perplex and dash the
maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low.”[xii] This
is exactly what Socrates and Jesus do and why they are murdered. Their discourse is revolutionary,
anti-authoritarian, and appeals to the common man. This is the major reason that the discourse
is obscure, it represents a conspiratorial challenge to a power structure, and
those conspiring must be secretive.

If you think this model is ancient and no
longer prevalent—think again. The United States of America was founded on
similar principles. The founding fathers were outcasts from heavenly Europe.
They imported slaves to tend to their fields; and used the Bible to rationalize
the slavery to themselves and the slaves. They would go on to conspire and
rebel against their Lord, King George. To insure their place of power, they
would write the Constitution in secret, and in such a language, that would
mystify the indentured servant class. Fast-forward to the 1980’s, the American
Sybil, Nancy Reagan, put a syeg on
all drugs when she told people to “Just say ‘no’ to drugs.” Meanwhile, Ronald
Reagan's administration was working hard selling crack cocaine in black ghettos
to generate funds for the Contras in
Nicaragua. The effect: “There are now [as of 2000] more than 450,000 drug
offenders behind bars, a total nearly equal to the entire US prison population
of 1980.”[xiii]
The rock the builder refused has become the cornerstone; the lord did this and
it is marvelous.

Rhetorically speaking, it is not what is true
that is important, but what is believable.I may have bitten off more than I can
chew resulting in a thesis that’s hard to swallow, but my discourse is an
acquired taste. In an effort to make
this discourse more palatable, I will sweeten it with one last drop of honey—a
model of this scheme drawn from the natural world. A similar situation occurs in the honeybee
colony. While still larvae in the
honeycomb, the larvae destined to be queen are fed a special food called Royal
Jelly. Royal Jelly is secreted from the
worker bees’ foreheads. This food enables the queen bee to live thirty times
longer, grow two times larger, reproduce, but more importantly release
pheromones allowing her to control the behavior of the hive. There is no distinction from a worker bee and
a queen bee, except that the queen bee eats the Royal Jelly. If another bee eats Royal Jelly, the bee will
develop the queen bee qualities. When
this happens, the two queens either: fight until one is killed, or one queen
may induce her “followers” to make an exodus from the hive to start a newcolony where process repeats itself.